Site Mobile Navigation

Reviving Musical Dreams in Middle Age

AN inexplicable love of the cello had long resided in the back of Cassandra Gordon’s mind. One day, while attending a toddler music class with a granddaughter in Brookline, Mass., she saw a sign in the lobby advertising adult music lessons. She decided to act.

Ms. Gordon approached the registrar, who gave her a list of four teachers. She plucked a name off the list, rented a cello and began lessons. That was 11 years ago. Now, Ms. Gordon, 73, a retired travel writer and tour guide, is still at it, practicing 45 minutes a day despite morning stiffness in her fingers, difficulty memorizing music and trouble with the subtleties of rhythm. Hauling around a large instrument is not so easy either.

And she has gotten pretty good.

“Believe it or not, I’ve played with an orchestra,” said Ms. Gordon, who lives in the South End of Boston. “I have played with a coached quartet at the New England Conservatory. I go to cello camp in the summer. To say that I am besotted is just beyond definition.”

Ms. Gordon is a member of that hardy group of amateur musicians who pick up instruments later in life, defiers of the “can’t teach old dogs new tricks” truism. While many come back to music after studying as a child, primed to play but now free of the parentally imposed obligation, others confront it cold. Without young brains and their abundantly firing neurons and with bodies burdened by years of wear and tear, technique comes more slowly. The physical repetition of practice does not find the same fertile ground.

But for those who stick it out, the rewards can be enormous. Adult musicians can find whole new social networks, a sense of meaning in midlife and a creative outlet they did not have before. The sense of accomplishment can be powerful.

“It’s been a wonderful trip,’ she said. “I hope that I will continue to play long into the sunset, as often as I can.” She added, “I only wish I had started 30 years ago.”

And she said her children, and the now 12-year-old granddaughter from the toddler class, are her biggest fans.

Ms. Gordon found her first teacher randomly, but there are other ways to connect to an instructor. Many conservatories have extension programs, including the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Mass., which has 200 adult students in group classes and individual lessons, said Karen Zorn, Longy’s president. Private instruction runs about $100 an hour, which is on the high end for beginners, but midrange over all. Group classes are about $40 each.

Some private teachers, depending on location, will charge even less for private sessions. But the range is broad. Wealthy families have been known to hire freelancers as full-time, in-house teachers to provide daily lessons to a member of the household. Salaries for these teachers, which often include benefits like housing and travel, can approach six figures. It has the whiff of 18th-century royal courts.

Boston is a hotbed of musical amateurs, as is New York, which has an abundance of community music schools. One, Greenwich House Music School in the Village, has 100 adult students, paying $68 an hour and almost all studying piano. Menon Dwarka, the school’s director, attributes the piano’s dominance to the “instant gratification” that comes from a keyboard instrument. Tone quality is not a worry. “If they hit the right key on a piano, they get a good sound,” he said. (The disadvantage of studying the piano, however, is limited opportunity to play in an orchestra.) Most of the adult students are over 30, Mr. Dwarka said. “They have the time and money to be able to come back and do this kind of thing,” he said.

That holds especially true for baby boomers with the money to buy the expensive guitars they always wanted and to pick up the rock music they grew up with. Matt Smith, an Austin-based guitarist, recording studio owner and teacher, has taught hundreds over the years — mostly men. “They grew up playing rock ’n’ roll and put it aside to raise their families,” he said. “Basically they want to play it again.” Mr. Smith also teaches at the National Guitar Workshop, a music camp that offers weeklong summer sessions in six locations.

Music stores can be a source of lessons. Others in the field suggest contacting university music departments to find a teacher. And of course there are the major conservatories, although sometimes the offerings can be surprisingly limited for adult beginners. The Juilliard School has an evening division that offers group classes for piano and voice only. But it has another excellent resource: an online national directory of Juilliard alumni, faculty and students that can be sorted geographically, by instrument and type — teachers who focus on adults, children or lessons in the home.

Photo

NEVER TOO LATE Cassandra Gordon began playing cello 11 years ago.Credit
Gretchen Ertl for The New York Times

Instrument teaching has found a welcome home on the Web. There are Web sites that offer instructional DVDs and online instruction. And many teachers are turning to Skype and other online chat systems as a way to teach.

The other major way of finding a teacher is, not surprisingly, word of mouth. Rachel Stettler, the director of the Winsor School, an elite girls’ school in Boston, found her first cello teacher through a friend from high school, a professional flutist married to a cellist.

Ms. Stettler, 55, had studied the harpsichord seriously in high school. The choice of instrument was a rebellion against string-playing family members. “I was trying to be different,” she said. “I never really loved that instrument.”

Now Ms. Stettler’s cello teacher is William Rounds, a member of the Boston Pops and a regular substitute with the Boston Symphony who also now teaches Ms. Gordon. Ms. Stettler has played in community orchestras, string quartets and summer programs.

“I had always loved the sound of strings and what they could do together,” she said.

Finding the right teacher is critical. Mr. Dwarka of Greenwich House suggested attending the recitals of faculty members at music schools and then meeting them afterward. Ms. Zorn, of the Longy School, said first lessons should be viewed as subtle auditions of a teacher by the adult student. “Try a few,” she said. “The chemistry’s so important.”

Prospective adult students, she said, should flee from intimidating teachers. “They should find a teacher with whom they feel very comfortable at taking risks,” she said. “They shouldn’t be dreading their lessons the way they may have as a child.”

Ms. Zorn said one test was if the teacher had the adult student make music in the first lesson. Too much talk is not a good thing.

Teachers of adults should also be prepared to accommodate adult lives — that is, the demands of family and work.

“You have to have a fairly high tolerance for lack of practice and making something happen in a lesson,” Ms. Zorn said. If the student has not practiced, “then you make the lesson a practice session. That’s half the battle, learning how to be efficient in practice. A good teacher teaches a student how to be mindful of every moment of practice, so they can really accomplish something in only 10 minutes.”

Other qualities are important in the teachers of adults. “Sometimes with my adult students, I have to be more a cheerleader and a therapist than with the kids,” said bj Karpen, an oboist in New York. For the average adolescent student, an instrument is just one of many things they are learning. “For an adult to be taking an instrument and pouring themselves into it, they beat themselves up more,” she said. On the other hand, adult musicians often have a greater capacity for self-diagnosis and solving problems.

For musically sophisticated adults, however, the gap between performance and expectation can be troubling. “It’s very frustrating to have something in your head and not be able to reproduce it,” Ms. Stettler said.

Like other adult students, she has a warning for would-be music students. Progress may be slow. Frustrations will arise. Doggedness is king.

“You have to love the process, because there’s never going to be an end product,” Ms. Stettler said. “You have to love the actual state of being by yourself and practicing.”

Correction: March 3, 2012

An article on Thursday about people who resume or take up musical training later in life misspelled the surname of the director of the Greenwich House Music School in New York. He is Menon Dwarka, not Dworka.

A version of this article appears in print on March 1, 2012, on Page F6 of the New York edition with the headline: Reviving Musical Dreams in Middle Age. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe